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If this be so, how do we explain the teaching that evils can
never pass away but "exist of necessity," that "while evil has no
place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place
for ever"?
Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its
orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice There
or any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other but all true
to the settled plan, while injustice and disorder prevail on
earth, designated as "the Mortal Kind and this Place"?
Not quite so: for the precept to "flee hence" does not refer to
earth and earthly life. The flight we read of consists not in
quitting earth but in living our earth-life "with justice and
piety in the light of philosophy"; it is vice we are to flee, so
that clearly to the writer Evil is simply vice with the sequels
of vice. And when the disputant in that dialogue says that, if
men could be convinced of the doctrine advanced, there would be
an end of Evil, he is answered, "That can never be: Evil is of
necessity, for there must be a contrary to good."
Still we may reasonably ask how can vice in man be a contrary to
The Good in the Supernal: for vice is the contrary to virtue and
virtue is not The Good but merely the good thing by which Matter
is brought to order.
How can there any contrary to the Absolute Good, when the
absolute has no quality?
Besides, is there any universal necessity that the existence of
one of two contraries should entail the existence of the other?
Admit that the existence of one is often accompanied by the
existence of the other- sickness and health, for example- yet
there is no universal compulsion.
Perhaps, however, our author did not mean that this was
universally true; he is speaking only of The Good.
But then, if The Good is an essence, and still more, if It is
that which transcends all existence, how can It have any
contrary?
That there is nothing contrary to essence is certain in the case
of particular existences- established by practical proof- but not
in the quite different case of the Universal.
But of what nature would this contrary be, the contrary to
universal existence and in general to the Primals?
To essential existence would be opposed the non-existence; to the
nature of Good, some principle and source of evil. Both these
will be sources, the one of what is good, the other of what is
evil; and all within the domain of the one principle is opposed,
as contrary, to the entire domain of the other, and this in a
contrariety more violent than any existing between secondary
things.
For these last are opposed as members of one species or of one
genus, and, within that common ground, they participate in some
common quality.
In the case of the Primals or Universals there is such complete
separation that what is the exact negation of one group
constitutes the very nature of the other; we have diametric
contrariety if by contrariety we mean the extreme of remoteness.
Now to the content of the divine order, the fixed quality, the
measuredness and so forth- there is opposed the content of the
evil principle, its unfixedness, measurelessness and so forth:
total is opposed to total. The existence of the one genus is a
falsity, primarily, essentially, a falseness: the other genus has
Essence-Authentic: the opposition is of truth to lie; essence is
opposed to essence.
Thus we see that it is not universally true that an Essence can
have no contrary.
In the case of fire and water we would admit contrariety if it
were not for their common element, the Matter, about which are
gathered the warmth and dryness of one and the dampness and cold
of the other: if there were only present what constitutes their
distinct kinds, the common ground being absent, there would be,
here also, essence contrary to essence.
In sum, things utterly sundered, having nothing in common,
standing at the remotest poles, are opposites in nature: the
contrariety does not depend upon quality or upon the existence of
a distinct genus of beings, but upon the utmost difference, clash
in content, clash in effect.
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